The Exchange by Any Other Name

At yesterday’s meeting of the state’s Health Benefit Exchange board, Chris Kelly, the exchange’s senior advisor for marketing and outreach, presented the four finalists in the project to pick a new name for the exchange — the name that will be used to market the exchange’s choices and services.

“We brought forward about 13 names last time [at the Aug. 23 board meeting],” Kelly said, “including Wellquest and, of course, Avocado — that is still a crowd favorite.”

Kelly prefaced his presentation by reiterating that each proposed name includes a marketing package with a unique logo and tagline — “a voice of its own,” as Kelly put it.

“We conducted focus groups last week, we did six of them, total, and we tried to get every socioeconomic group,” he said. “And out of that list came a short list of names.”

Four of them, to be exact:

Covered, CA
CaliHealth
Ursa
Eureka

Kelly said the list would be cut down to one or two names (“Three, max,” he said) by Monday.

Exchange board executive director Peter Lee said focus group participants had mixed reactions to all of the names. “But we had a common reaction to the idea of the exchange,” Lee said, “whatever we call it. There is huge interest and excitement about this. And the opportunity to be involved in the birthing of it, well, the excitement in the room was palpable.”

Once the name choices are whittled down to two names next week, a trademark review will be conducted, and two to three logos will be designed for each name by the start of October. After more focus group testing in mid-October, the final revisions to the logo design should be done by the end of October, Kelly said.